Surveyors' ending shot - v1

Here's the first rough version of the final pullback that ends Surveyors. With Chris and Hayley talking on the elevator platform, Chris says his final line and then there's this major pullback to see his elevator as well as others going up and down in a huge cavern. It might be hard to see in this compressed version, but there are three elements that need to get combined. The first is the closeup live action footage of them talking. Then there's the image of their bodies and the elevator that needs to get merged in with the closeup (difficult since the reference photo for them standing there doesn't match the best take of them talking - their positions have shifted). And then the fully cg background cavern. Fortunately, the shot favors a massive unzoom rather than a dolly back which means that only one high quality render of the cavern is necessary rather than repeated passes from a flythrough perspective. As final touches, other elevators will get composited in as well as the closing box effect that finishes the shot.

The Thieves Trap complete

And here's how the whole trap sequence plays out. While the beginning and end of the trap use heavy cg, it turned out well to use a bit of live action in the middle to ground the shots geographically. Also, while the shot of the construction worker sliding down in the background wan't really necessary, it does provide a good way to shift the focus away from the trap and back to the guys struggling to hold the line.

Second part of Thieves trap, pt. 2

Revised. It's getting there..

Second part of Thieves trap

After the first section, there's a quick flyby past the thieves and then up to this last part that shows a platform being pulled out to cause an avalanche. This is still pretty rough - the lighting doesn't show the pulleys and ropes as well as they should be seen and the teetering wall of boxes isn't so obvious with the camera still moving. There's really no need for there to be too much in-depth cg for this sequence since it'll be the thieves themselves that sell it, but showing the basic mechanics is pretty necessary at this spot.

first part of the Thieves' trap

Here's a first look at the first of three cg shots that show the trap the Thieves are getting into. This is the trickiest part of all the shorts because it's full computer generated imagery without the benefit of any live action to keep it grounded in reality. But it's coming together well and moves quickly enough that there's not too much time to question whether those are real boxes or not.